Self-Adapting Hydrogel to Improve the Therapeutic Effect in Wound-Healing

Abstract

Smart materials that can respond to multistimuli have been broadly studied. However, the smart materials that can spontaneously answer the ever-changing inner environment of living bodies have not been reported. Here, we report a strategy based on the dynamic chemistry to develop possible self-adapting solid materials that can automatically change shape without external stimuli, as organisms do. The self-adapting property of a chitosan-based self-healing hydrogel has been rediscovered since its dynamic Schiff-base network confers the unique mobility to that solid gel. As a result, the hydrogel can move slowly, like an octopus climbing through a narrow channel, only following the natural forces of surface tension and gravity. The fascinating self-adapting feature enables this hydrogel as an excellent drug carrier for the in vivo wound treatment. In a healing process of the rat-liver laceration, this self-adapting hydrogel demonstrated remarkable superiority over traditional drug delivery methods, suggesting the great potential of this self-adapting hydrogel as a promising new material for biomedical applications. We believe the current research revealed a possible strategy to achieve self-adapting materials and may pave the way toward the further development, study, and application of new-generation smart materials.

Physical Double‐Network Hydrogel Adhesives with Rapid Shape Adaptability, Fast Self‐Healing, Antioxidant and NIR/pH Stimulus‐Responsiveness for Multidrug‐Resistant Bacterial Infection and Removable Wound Dressing

“…Hydrogels with fascinating injectability and self‐adapting feature can enable them as excellent dressing for in vivo wound treatment, due to their shear thinning property and automatically changing shape without external stimuli to match the wound site. [ 30 ] As shown in Figure 3h, the PEGSD2/GTU5.0 in the syringes could be continuously injected into the water and still maintained good hydrogel morphology without any clogging and dissolution (Movie S5, Supporting Information), and the hydrogel could also be injected to draw “XJTU” due to the shear thinning property and stable network of hydrogel. The injected hydrogel mass followed the containers' shape revealing its self‐adaptability in spite of high stiffness to maintain their freestanding shape (Figure 3i).…”

Magnetic Hydrogel with Optimally Adaptive Functions for Breast Cancer Recurrence Prevention

“…The rheological properties of magnetic hydrogel were primarily attributed to the macromolecules used and the characteristics of their crosslinking, which facilitate its adapting functions. By elaborated design of cross‐linked chemical binding or physical interaction, several types of smart hydrogels that are sensitive to temperature, pH, enzymes or multiple parameters responsive in the disease microenvironment have been reported . Among these hydrogels, a self‐healing hydrogel based on chitosan and difunctional telechelic poly(ethylene glycol) (DT‐PEG) is of particular interest to construct self‐adapting magnetic hydrogel because of its high biocompatibility, biodegradability, adjustable gelation time, and rapid responsiveness to biological microenvironments .…”

Synthesis and Biomedical Applications of Self-healing Hydrogels

“…Self-healing hydrogels have received increasing attentions in biomedical applications, such as wound healing (Gaharwar et al, 2014 ; Han et al, 2016 ; Zhao et al, 2017 ; Zhu, S. K. et al, 2017 ; Li et al, 2018 ; Liu, B. et al, 2018 ), drug delivery (Huebsch et al, 2014 ; Liu et al, 2016 ; Wang et al, 2016 ; Xing et al, 2016 ; Wang J. Y. et al, 2017 ; Xia et al, 2017 ; Yavvari et al, 2017 ; Zhu, C. et al, 2017 ; Hong et al, 2018 ), tissue engineering (Dankers et al, 2012 ; Bastings et al, 2014 ; Gaffey et al, 2015 ; Rodell et al, 2015a , b ; Loebel et al, 2017 ), surface coating (Canadell et al, 2011 ; Yoon et al, 2011 ; Yang et al, 2015 ), 3D printing (Highley et al, 2015 ; Darabi et al, 2017 ; Loebel et al, 2017 ; Wang et al, 2018 ), and soft robot (Shi et al, 2015 ; Darabi et al, 2017 ; Han et al, 2017 ; Liu, B. et al, 2018 ; Liu et al, 2018 ). In these cases, dibenzaldehyde-based, UPy-based, catechol-based, and host–guest-based self-healing hydrogels are highlighted due to many evaluations of in vivo experiments.…”